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Comment by tootie | Hacker News Reader

I have never caught even the slightest whiff of Trump knowing what he's doing on any topic. I'm genuinely not trying to be glib either, this is a sincere observation. When has he publicly or privately intimated that he understands how tariffs or trade work? Or energy or immigration or infrastructure or technology? His public persona gives facile and misleading explanations that are ostensibly just politicking, but every tidbit of leaked insider accounts or hot mics or unguarded moments don't show anything more than the same persona.

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> When has he publicly or privately intimated that he understands how tariffs or trade work?

He has a Bachelor's Degree in Economics.

>He has a Bachelor's Degree in Economics.

Must have been worth as much as toilet paper considering his history of bankruptcies. I would be highly suspect of every person involved in letting him earn a degree in anything.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-updates/ge...

Trump's greatest talent is in lying with a straight face, then finding explanations for the lies:

>Why the discrepancy? Perhaps this will give us an idea: Trump told Washington Post reporters that he counted the first three bankruptcies as just one.

His failed businesses include money printing machines aka casinos.

How many successful business founders have never failed?

Sadly, this doesn't say much. He was a terrible student by all accounts.

>by all accounts

Which accounts?

For example:

https://studyinternational.com/news/trump-student-wharton/

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/09/14/donald-trump-at-wh...

https://studyinternational.com/news/trump-student-wharton/

> Despite the US president attesting to the fact that he finished “top of his class” at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, his former college professor, William T. Kelley, had another view.

> After Kelley’s death, Frank DiPrima, a close friend of Kelley, revealed that the professor felt the president was a fool.

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/09/14/donald-trump-at-wh...

> It was, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, a day that will live in infamy. When President Donald Trump emerged from his mysterious one-on-one summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July of 2018, the respective visages and body language of the two world leaders could not have been further apart. The Russian president looked smug and sated, like a vampire with a bellyful of peasant blood; Trump looked like a man who’d just received a painful enema.

Any accounts that could be taken seriously?

You are confusing the actual accounts with the surrounding article.

Look, Trump has been claiming that he graduated first in class, but never provided any evidence. In fact, he refuses to publish his college records. Why is that?

> You are confusing the actual accounts with the surrounding article.

The first one is hearsay from a dead guy and the other one is a creative writing project. If you had these accounts handy from reputable sources, you would have posted them from the reputable sources. This is not the standard of commentary expected of this forum.

> Look, Trump has been claiming that he graduated first in class, but never provided any evidence.

The articles I have read on the subject suggest that this claim is impossible because he would have been on the honor roll and does not appear there. This tells me that he’s either delusional, misinformed, or a liar. It doesn’t tell me he doesn’t understand economics.

Go back to my comment further up. When has he ever publicly or privately demonstrated that he understands economics? He repeatedly insists that exporters pay tariffs. He says a trade deficit means we're being robbed. His list of misapprehensions on basic ideas is very long. Absent evidence to the contrary, one can only conclude he knows nothing about economics. Maybe he studied it 50 years ago and maybe he didn't. He has not demonstrated an iota of fluency since entering politics.

> The first one is hearsay from a dead guy

The first article also contains testimonies of some of Trumps former class mates, citing them by their full names.

> and the other one is a creative writing project.

Did you actually read past the first paragraph? You may disagree with the style, but it has some reputable sources. For example, they quote Michael Cohen's testimony in the House where he told that Trump ordered him to threat all of Trump's former schools and universities with legal action if they would ever release any records.

> It doesn’t tell me he doesn’t understand economics.

His public statements clearly suggest that he doesn't understand economics. You brought his Bachelor degree as a counter example. I tried to point out that such a degree doesn't say much if you just did the bare minimum to pass. Hell, he said it himself in "The Art of the Deal":

"In my opinion, that degree doesn’t prove very much, but a lot of people I do business with take it very seriously, and it’s considered very prestigious. So all things considered, I’m glad I went to Wharton."

This tariff plan isn't Trumps. He co-opted Robert Lighthizer last time round, He was a trade negotiator, who believes strongly in protectionism.

It is Howard Lutnick's plan who is the Secretary of Commerce.

Has been widely reported that there was conflict amongst the inner circle about the extent of the tariffs and that it was Lutnick pushing for the most extreme version which is what we ended up with.

Thanks for the correction. I had trouble remembering the name and when I went searching Lighthizer came up first.

Is there a cite for that? I believe it just haven't seen it. Very worrying because Lutnick was Musk's guy and that puts him at least adjacent to Thiel and his cult of monarchy.

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